Summerbees I knew of Mick and I knew of Nick, But I didn’t know of your existence, Until early one morning on the number 46 bus, When I was reading a Swindon Town programme. It was back in 1992, And you told me that Nicky was your nephew, And I looked at you, someone I […]

Do you remember that lazy afternoon Back in August 1958? Well, I bloody well do mate. We were sitting on the bunker At the end of platform four, Just by the giant semaphore signal, When 5050 The Earl of St Germans Came steaming, Brunswick green and brass dome gleaming, To a shrieking, whistling halt; And […]

You called on Christmas Eve afternoon, Carrying an unwrapped parcel, A gift brought from memory lane: David Dangerfield’s dad’s football boots, Slightly battered but proud and dubbinned, Though still smeared with sixty-year old mud. Brown, big toe caps, heavy size 8s, Placed on the Christmas hearth to warm, Like two twin ships in dry dock, […]

It came upon a midnight clear, That glorious song of old, When angels bent down to the earth, And changed machine guns into harps, And turned leaden bullets into golden carols That drifted across no man’s land, And choirs of soldiers joined the angels In a cease-fire of exultation, While all the bloodied uniformed citizens […]

We must have numbered a football team, Umbrellas unfurled at the cenotaph, Where we spoke of Walter Tull and Spurs, And Swindon Town and Northampton Town Footballers who fell in the Great War – The rain providing a suitably melancholy backdrop, As we made our hilltop climb to Christ Church, A welcoming peal rather than […]